Rhapsody in Blue

According to no less an authority than Jim Farrington, former Music Librarian and Director of the World Music Archive at Wesleyan University, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is arguably the most famous American classical music piece ever composed and certainly among ‘the most often recorded.’

Banjo maestro Béla Fleck’s Rhapsody in Blue celebrates the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Gershwin’s ‘jazz concert’ as performed by the Paul Whiteman band with the composer at the piano on February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall in New York City. Fleck’s five-track tribute begins with ‘Rhapsody in Blue(grass)’, which features the piano replaced by a banjo and members of Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart band – Michael Cleveland, Sierra Hull, Justin Moses, Mark Schatz and Bryan Sutton – sitting in for the orchestra. The result is a consummately crafted, thoroughly swinging variation on Gershwin’s composition. Similarly, ‘Rhapsody in Blue(s)’, which features Fleck with bosom bandmates Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Victor Wooten, turns what in lesser hands could easily have been a trifling romp into a legit fresh take on Gershwin’s century-old masterwork. Fleck includes a wonderfully arranged classic arrangement of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ starring the banjo as instrumental soloist backed by Eric Jacobson & the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Rounding out the album is a solo banjo rendition of Gershwin’s ‘Rialto Ripples’, a ragtime number that was first performed in 1916 and published in 1917, and ‘Unidentified Piece for Banjo,’ a heretofore never recorded gem discovered at the Library of Congress.